“Chet Ondowsky,” she said. “The news correspondent who was first on the scene after the school blew up. In the afternoon he had a mole beside his mouth, but when the special report came on that night at ten, it was gone.”

“Thank God for Max Factor, huh?” Jerome says as he leaves the expressway.

He’s right, of course, it even occurred to her when the news bulletin came on: crooked tie, no time to cover the mole with makeup. Later on, when Ondowsky’s support crew arrived, they took care of that. Still, it’s a little strange. Holly is sure a makeup person would have left the scratches—they were good TV, made the correspondent look heroic—but wouldn’t the makeup guy or gal have cleaned some of the brick dust from around Ondowsky’s mouth in the process of covering the mole?

“Holly?” Jerome asks. “Are you overcranking again?”

“Yes,” she says. “Too much stress, not enough rest.”

“Let it go.”

“Yes,” she says. It’s good advice. She intends to follow it.

December 14, 2020

1

Holly expected another night of tossing and turning, but she sleeps right through until her phone alarm (“Orinoco Flow”) gently wakes her. She feels rested, fully herself again. She slips to her knees, does her few morning meditations, then settles into her tiny breakfast nook for a bowl of oatmeal, a cup of yogurt, and a big mug of Constant Comment.

As she enjoys her little repast, she reads the local paper on her iPad. News of the Macready School bombing has slipped from the front page (dominated, as usual, by the president’s idiotic shenanigans) to the National News section. This is because there have been no fresh developments. More victims have been released from the hospital; two kids, one of them a talented basketball player, remain in critical condition; the police claim to be following a number of leads. Holly doubts it. There is nothing about Chet Ondowsky, and he’s the first person she thought of when Enya’s high notes urged her back to wakefulness. Not her mother, not her uncle. Was she dreaming about Ondowsky? If she was, she can’t remember.

She exits the newspaper, opens Safari, and types in Ondowsky’s name. The first thing she learns is that his real first name is Charles, not Chester, and he’s been with Pittsburgh’s NBC affiliate for the last two years. His stated beat is charmingly alliterative: crime, community, and consumer fraud.

There are any number of videos. Holly clicks on the most recent, titled “WPEN Welcomes Chet and Fred Home.” Ondowsky enters the newsroom (wearing a new suit), followed by a young man wearing a plaid shirt and khaki pants with big pockets on the sides. They are greeted by a wave of applause from the station’s staff, both the on-air people and the studio crew. Looks like forty or fifty in all. The young man—Fred—grins. Ondowsky reacts with surprise, then pleasure of an appropriately modest sort. He even applauds them in return. A woman dressed to the nines, probably a news anchor, comes forward. “Chet, you’re our hero,” she says, and kisses him on the cheek. “You too, Freddy.” No kiss for the young man though, just a quick pat on the shoulder.

“I’ll rescue you anytime, Peggy,” Ondowsky says, drawing laughter and more applause. That’s where the clip ends.

Holly watches some more clips, choosing at random. In one, Chet stands outside a burning apartment building. In another, he’s at the site of a multiple vehicle pileup on a bridge. In the third, he’s reporting on the groundbreaking of a new YMCA, complete with ceremonial silver spade and a soundtrack featuring the Village People. A fourth, from just before Thanksgiving, shows him knocking repeatedly on the door of a so-called “pain clinic” in Sewickley, and getting nothing for his pains but a muffled “No questions, go away!”

Busy guy, busy guy, Holly thinks. And in none of these clips does Charles “Chet” Ondowsky have a mole. Because it’s always covered with makeup, she tells herself as she rinses her few dishes in the sink. It was just that once, when he had to get on the air in a hurry, that it showed. And why are you worrying about this, anyway? It’s like when some annoying pop song turns into an earworm.

Because she’s up early, she has time for an episode of The Good Place before leaving for work. She goes into her television room, picks up the remote, then just holds it, staring at the blank screen. After a bit, she puts the remote down and goes back into the kitchen. She powers up her iPad and finds the clip of Chet Ondowsky doing his investigative song and dance about the Sewickley pain clinic.

After the guy inside tells Chet to get lost, the story goes to Ondowsky in a medium close-up, holding the mike (WPEN logo prominently displayed) to his mouth and smiling grimly. “You heard it, self-identified ‘pain doctor’ Stefan Muller refusing to answer questions and telling us to go away. We did, but we’ll keep coming back and asking questions until we get some answers. This is Chet Ondowsky, in Sewickley. Back to you, David.”

Holly watches it again. On this run-through she freezes the picture just as Ondowsky is saying we’ll keep coming back. The mike dips a bit at that point, giving her a good view of his mouth. She spreads her fingers to zoom the image until his mouth fills the screen. There is no mole there, she’s sure of it. She’d see its ghost even if it was covered with foundation and powder.

Thoughts of The Good Place have left her mind.

Ondowsky’s initial report from the scene of the explosion isn’t on the WPEN site, but it is on the NBC News site. She goes to it and once more spreads her fingers, enlarging the image until the screen is filled with Chet Ondowsky’s mouth. And guess what, that isn’t a mole at all. Is it dirt? She doesn’t think so. She thinks it’s hair. A spot he missed shaving, maybe.

Or maybe something else.

Maybe the remains of a fake mustache.

Now thoughts of getting in to the office early so she can check the answering machine and do some peaceful paperwork before Pete comes in have also left her mind. She gets up and walks twice around the kitchen, her heart beating hard in her chest. What she’s thinking can’t be true, it’s totally stupid, but what if it is true?

She googles Macready Middle School Explosion and finds the still of the delivery guy/bomber. She uses her fingers to enlarge the picture, focusing on the guy’s mustache. She’s thinking about those cases you read about from time to time where some serial arsonist turns out to be a fireman, either from the responding department or from a volunteer crew. There was even a true crime book about that, Fire Lover, by Joseph Wambaugh. She read it when she was in high school. It’s like some fracked-up Munchausen by proxy.

Too monstrous. Can’t be.

But Holly finds herself wondering for the first time how Chet Ondowsky got to the scene of the explosion so fast, beating all the other reporters by . . . well, she doesn’t know just how long, but he was there first. She knows that.

But wait, does she? She didn’t see any other reporters doing stand-ups during that first bulletin, but can she be sure?

She rummages in her bag and finds her phone. Since the case she and Ralph Anderson shared—the one that ended in gunfire at the Marysville Hole—she and Ralph often talk, and it’s usually early in the morning. Sometimes he calls her; sometimes she’s the one who reaches out. Her finger hovers over his number but doesn’t descend. Ralph is on an unexpected (and well deserved) vacation with his wife and son, and even if he’s not still sleeping at seven in the morning, it’s his family time. Bonus family time. Does she want to bother him with this on so little?